


Anger and agony are better than misery

by mahkent



Category: Everyman HYBRID
Genre: Depersonalization, Gen, Introspection, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 22:45:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16207220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahkent/pseuds/mahkent
Summary: Look at yourself in the mirror.You don’t recognize the person reflected back at you.





	Anger and agony are better than misery

Look at yourself in the mirror.

You don’t recognize the person reflected back at you. He’s got short brown hair, the soft strands sometimes hanging in front of his eyes when you forget to get it cut, and he’s got your crooked nose. It’s crooked because it was broken, you remember so distantly that it’s like you just read about it; some big guy jumped you and you fought as hard as you could but you were just too small. He wrapped his hand around the back of your head and slammed it into a lunch table. You remember the snap and pain blooming in your face, damnit, but the nose in the mirror doesn’t look familiar at all to you. It’s got the same little dark spot from where you picked at the skin too much and it scarred. But it isn’t yours.

You don’t recognize the eyes in the mirror. 

The left a greyish blue, hazy in your confusing vision, the pupil wide; the right a faded purple, solid color almost pitch black in the shadow from your brow. They aren’t your eyes. The way they turn down, looking almost sad, the darkness of the soft skin around them- it’s so unfamiliar that you can’t help but keep staring into them. The colors shift and whirl, the purple fading to grey fading to a dark, dark storm of foreign poison. The blue swims too- like a dirty pond, filled with dull green algae and mud swirling up from the bottom. 

Trace your face with your-not-your eyes. 

Look at the thin, high jawline, making the face in the mirror look elfish and young. Then consider the high cheekbones- the sallow cheeks make them look sickly instead of sexy. Look at the few freckles under the eyes. Look at the dark scar tracing down the temple, from a situation you don't quite remember. (You do, only vaguely- someone swinging a knife at you, your lips pulled away from crooked teeth as you snarl like a feral dog; something foreign puppeting your body instead of you puppeting a foreign body.)

Swing your fist at the mirror. 

Feel the hard bone of your knuckle connect with the glass, the force in the body you're in shattering the glass into a thousand pieces. Watch the glass splinter and crack in the millisecond it takes; see the blood dripping off of your knuckles, now. Tiny shards lodge themselves into your skin- the sting is the first thing you recognize as truly yours. Then the blood starting to drip down your fingers, a dark red that reminds you of wine.

Think of who you are. 

Are you, though? Are you anything but the faintest thought appearing behind a face you don’t recognize? Sometimes- all the time- you think you’re just false. A delusion running circles around some poor guy, his body puppeted by you when you’re just a lie. Some demon controlling a body with strings you can’t even feel. You're so many things that aren't the body reflected back at you in that damned mirror, that stranger you still can't quite recognize. 

Feel the sting of the new cuts in your hand.

Pain. It’s the only thing you can feel anymore- the warm-hot sting of an open wound. It’s so much better than being numb. It’s even better when you’re hurt by someone else, and you get to be angry (so often but it’s all happening through the cellophane wrapping keeping you from recognizing this man you’re looking at, puppeting like the poor marionette he is) at last. A fire in your belly spreading to your whole body- it’s the only time you feel like you’re real. 

Feel tears dripping so distantly down your face.

Acid down your skin, lava over your flesh, the tears are so hot that your nerves light up with pain. The man in the shattered mirror is a thousand pieces, his face splintered and cracked, he doesn't react- he just keeps staring with those dark eyes, the dirty pond and the poisonous storm, he just keeps staring you down as hard as he can. A thousand reflections of those damned dark eyes, all of them staring deep into your withered soul; you look away. His shattered image looks away. 

Leave the shattered stranger behind.

**Author's Note:**

> pain by three days grace;
> 
> i love evan and love projecting onto him


End file.
